NERC analysis by R Cowles

I haven't seen anyone reference this so I will post it for your consideration. The NERC data is an important peek into how things are going even if there is lots of 'spin' in the report conclusion. Rick Cowles has done an outstanding job in evaluating the raw data. Please read his analysis. My conclusion is fairly grim.

Answers

I just finished reading Cowles' pre-NERC report, and if 10% of the
reporters in this country would have done the legwork that he did, the
headlines would have been much different. But there I go expecting
journalists to actually RESEARCH a story instead of accepting the
PR spin at face value... Quick, somebody slap me to my senses!

I suspect that the real danger lies in the possibility that many power
companies might be relying extensively on type (sample) testing and
vendor statements for assessing/testing embedded systems, especially
in their transmission and distribution systems. Anyone familiar with
the work of Frautschi and others on embedded systems knows that such
"methodologies" for assessing embedded systems can be disturbingly
unreliable. Seemingly identical embedded systems can have quite
different individual chips within them; vendor statements can be
inaccurate. The NERC report briefly recognizes this danger when it
advises power companies to check in their distribution systems every
individual embedded component whose failure would cause an outage.
One presumes that the same strategy should be followed when assessing
embedded systems in generating plants and transmission systems. The
question is, how many power companies are doing it?